Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/259

 ters, she made two dollars; if she sold fifty dollars' worth, she earned ten. She ought to average five dollars a day, she figured; and she liked the idea of active work, in which she could utilize all her energy and have the fun of devising her own schemes for making sales; there was the element of attack and contest about it, too; and, in the territory which was to be hers, practically no chance of encountering Evanston acquaintances.

She tried to start at the actual offering of her wares, on this morning after her expedition with Mr. Saltro, in something of the spirit of sporting, half-humorous adventure in which she had carried her samples away from Bostrock's; but it proved an amazingly difficult feeling to summon when setting out from Clearedge Street.

She had breakfast, not in the big, cheerful, quiet dining room of home, but in a hot, noisy, smelly cafeteria; she was tired from last night; and that something which had been her peculiar possession—her conviction of innate superiority—was fled; and that something, which the other girls in the cafeteria possessed—confidence from experience in taking care of one's self—of course could not be hers. "Remember the American marines!" Clara encouraged her with a friendly grasp, when they parted on the corner where Marjorie took a street car. "Treat 'em all rough before they get a chance to rough you."

But Marjorie trembled too visibly to give even a good imitation of treating anybody rough when, after several counsels of her cowardice, she entered a small bank and began her business career. She made no sale but received such courteous treatment from a young mạn whom she approached that she agreed to come back